


The Stars are Crying

by Batwynn



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Character Death, M/M, Maybe - Freeform, ambiguous ending, world ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-08
Updated: 2014-10-08
Packaged: 2018-02-20 09:07:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 982
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2423123
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Batwynn/pseuds/Batwynn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are a thousand more stars in the sky, and there's nothing Tony can do to save them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Stars are Crying

His hands are shaking.  
 _Shaking._

The sky is filled with fire-light, falling from space, falling through the atmosphere in a way it shouldn't be able to. This is bad, this is so bad, and there's nothing he can do about it because it was _that_ bad. 

"Stark." 

"Don't." 

"Stark, we need—"

"Just, _Don't._ " 

Arms fold around him easily, like he's meant to fit right there under the god's chin, tucked against his chest. It's warm, something Tony feels like he doesn't deserve right now, not when there's nothing he can do. But it feels nice, like he's curled up somewhere safe. Protection, that's what it feels like, ironically enough. 

"Anthony," the voice rasps in his ear, emotional in ways Tony's never heard before. Then, it gets worse. "... _please._ " 

"I can't," Tony chokes out, hands reaching up to clutch at the metal vambraces crossing his chest. "I can't just leave them, that's not how I work, Loki." 

"It does not have to be this way. It cannot be this way." 

"I didn't start this." 

Loki falls silent at this, and Tony can feel his tension through his back. It gets worse, because he realizes the god's shaking too, and it's just _that_ bad. "You should go. Go back to Asgard or somewhere, just get away from here." 

Loki pulls him tighter against his chest, metal scraping against metal as the arms shift across his arc reactor. That used to scare him, whenever Loki came anywhere near his chest. But that was a year ago—no, a year and a half ago. A year and a half of Loki in his life, _being_ his life, and now he has to let Loki go. He wasn't his to keep, he wasn't his to kill. Tony could not ask him to do that.

"Go home, Loki," he commands softly, and lets his hands drop away. They're shaking. Loki's shaking. 

It's that bad.

Loki doesn't let go, he doesn't move an inch from where he stands pressed against his back. Tony can't help it, he's greedy, he wants him to stay. Maybe he'll survive, maybe he'll get away after he sees Tony die. Oh yes, he was going to die, he knew that. Everyone knew that. All they had to do was look up in the sky, look out into the void that was filled with a thousand more stars today. 

There's something people tend to forget about stars. They're not actually tiny pin-pricks of light in the sea of blackness. No, they're giant balls of gas, burning bright and large and dangerously. 

The sky had a thousand more stars today, bright and large, and so much closer. 

"Anthony, come with me," Loki was saying, and suddenly he's in front of him, kneeling—God, he was _kneeling_ —and looking up at him with the darkest eyes Tony has ever seen on him. "I'm begging you, let me save you." 

Begging now, too. It's that bad.

"I won't let this all go to waste, all your careful planning, all the sacrifices we made, hell, the ones everyone's been making to try to fix this. We worked too hard for me to just fucking run away."

Loki's face was an open mask of anguish now, and the fingers that had wound their way between Tony's, tightened. "I cannot take them all away with me, I'm not strong enough. It can only be one, and it can only be you." 

"One last time... I'm. Not. Going." 

Loki stares up at him from below, a vantage point, Tony notes, that he's never really seen Loki at. He looks small, for once, vulnerable and hurt. Tony reminds himself that he did that, he made that hurt, and he pulls the god to his feet, dusting off dirt and straightening his tunic. It's all a stupid ceremony, because what's a little dirt then the sky is fucking falling? 

Loki smiles suddenly, and Tony's absolutely captivated by it, even now. "I will stay with you, then."

"No, no, no, no, Loki. _No_." 

"It is my choice, and I choose here with you over any realm without you." 

"You might die." 

"I _will_ die." 

"No," Tony begs him now, his stupid shaking hands back on the god's arms, clutching at the cold metal that protects his lower arms again. The engravings bite into his palms, he's holding on so tightly. "Loki, you can't stay here and die with me." 

"And who, exactly, is going to stop me from doing just that?" 

Tony scowls at his smug expression, something that they both know is a weak mask, and that he allows because he has one up too. No point in falling apart, not yet. Not _now_.

There's a rumbling now, as if the Earth feels her death coming. Tony snorts at himself and glances up at the sky again. The end makes poets out of everyone, the thinks, and takes one of Loki's hands in his own. In his other is a controller with one, black button. It was going to be red, but red was vibrant, red was the color of his armor, the color of heroes. Black was better for something like this. 

The rumble grows louder, and Tony's hands are shaking. His entire body is shaking, and so is Loki's, and so is the ground under them. 

"Tony!" Loki calls out, because it's _that_ bad, and the god wraps himself around him as if he can protect him like he always did before. Tony says something he's said before once, just once when things were safe and good and he was half asleep but he remembers saying it now. So he says it again. Loki's laughing, or crying. It's getting hard to hear over the rumble, and it takes Tony a slow few seconds to realize the second wave of noise was screaming.

His hands are shaking. He almost misses the button.  
 _Almost._


End file.
